By The New York Times (Europe) | Created at 2024-09-27 21:23:25 | Updated at 2024-09-30 05:27:18
2 days ago
Arts|Clarice Rivers, Earthy Muse of Two Artists, Dies at 88
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/27/arts/clarice-rivers-dead.html
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
She inspired Niki de Saint Phalle to create the fantastical female avatars she called the Nanas. She also inspired her husband, Larry Rivers.
Sept. 27, 2024, 5:21 p.m. ET
In 1961, Clarice Rivers and her husband, Larry Rivers, the outlandish proto-Pop artist and jazz musician, spent nearly a year in Paris, living on the Impasse Ronsin, a tiny cul-de-sac and artist’s enclave that was home to Yves Klein, Niki de Saint Phalle and her husband, Jean Tinguely, the Swiss-born sculptor of kinetic, self-destructing contraptions.
There, Ms. Rivers, an effervescent Welsh expatriate, and Ms. de Saint Phalle became fast friends. At the time, Ms. de Saint Phalle was known for her “shooting” paintings — pieces embedded with bags of paint that she would blast with a rifle so they would explode in a spectacular fashion. But her work changed dramatically when she saw a drawing Mr. Rivers had made of his pregnant wife.
Her voluptuous form inspired Ms. de Saint Phalle to make what would become her most enduring work, the Nanas — “nana” is the French equivalent of “broad” or “chick” — bulbous and boldly painted female figures that look like a cross between the Venus of Willendorf and a Mexican piñata.
In 1966, when Ms. de Saint Phalle built her first large-scale piece, a house-size Nana that she called “Hon” — the Swedish word for “her” — in a museum in Stockholm, she installed a milk bar in her breast and a theater in one arm. Visitors entered through her vagina. In a letter to Ms. Rivers, Ms. de Saint Phalle boasted that a psychiatrist had written in a newspaper that “the Hon would change people’s dreams for years to come.”
Image
Image
Ms. Rivers, the exuberant muse who inspired Ms. de Saint Phalle as well as her husband, died on Aug. 22 in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. She was 88.
